


Entropy Resolving

by shewhospeakswiththunder



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Post TLJ, Rey Needs A Hug, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 19:30:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15914790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhospeakswiththunder/pseuds/shewhospeakswiththunder
Summary: The next Force Bond scene, after the door was closed.





	Entropy Resolving

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren was one hair’s-breadth away from screaming for so long and so loud that his vocal cords ripped in half. Paper-thin restraint, and the pinpoint fear of succumbing to his own insanity, kept him silent. His jaw clenched and unclenched, chewing through the burning that seared within his broad chest, an impossibly huge pain that had been cruelly condensed and pressurized to fit inside him.

Lack of sleep, he knew, contributed in no small part to his self-control’s brittle fragility, and every day he felt himself losing his grip on it just a little more. A swirling torment clouded his mind, always hitting him hardest when he was alone and all was quiet. The Force was still there, it always was and always would be, he reassured himself, but his sense of it was dull. It was as if he was underwater-- he could still hear its muted undertones, but all the intensity and brightness of the great symphony was lost in thick agnosia.

The edge of his too-small bed was hard beneath him. The spartan sleeping quarters he had been unable to part with, for reasons he didn’t like to admit to himself, were stifling to him now, the blandness of the gray walls pressing in on him. His body took up too much space, his hands unwieldy. His body was too small, bursting with all the dark thoughts and half-truths built up inside him.

          - _ one hair’s-breadth away _ -

Suddenly, through the muddiness of his despair pierced that familiar thrum of connection, that feeling of distance at once becoming intimacy, of entropy resolving into singular purpose. The vortex in his mind quieted. 

He whipped his head around to the source, and with a clarity he hadn’t experienced in weeks he heard his own breath and… there it was, the heartbeat that wasn’t his own. He drew a sharp intake, and he felt a mirrored quickening from somewhere in his personal bathroom.

Instinctively, he jumped up and skidded to a halt in the doorway. There she was, frozen in place, eyes wide, chest heaving. Skinnier, if that were even possible, with a new pallor in her features that pained him in a peripheral way. She was here.

The initial excited disbelief dimmed when the circumstances of their parting recalled themselves to him. Taking a defensive half-step backward, he said,

“You left me.”

A tremble through the bond.

“I didn’t want to,” Rey said. 

All of the disappointment and shame Kylo had tried so hard to kill over the past few weeks flared.

“Then why?” he demanded, raising his voice. He couldn’t help the anger that escaped him-- the hurt had no other way of release.

“It wasn’t right!” She met him anger for anger, sorrow for sorrow. “What would we have done? Ruled your horrible empire and killed anyone who didn’t agree with us?”

“Yes, if that’s what it took to be together!”

“No! There’s more to life than just killing everything and everyone that hurts you.” Her eyes shone with tears. “You were right about my parents. But I know I’m right about you. Is this what you want, Ben?”

He stilled, the childish temptation to double down in denial melting away. He closed his eyes, letting her tenuous, yet still bright hope wash through him. Laced with the lingering sadness of that closed door all those weeks ago, it shone all the brighter for it. 

His vision blurred as he stared at the cold metal floor, and he shook his head. 

Rey stepped closer.

“Ben,” she whispered, her own voice thick.

She was close enough to touch, and the thought made his knees weak. Kneeling in front of her, he reached for her, slowly, and laid his too-big hands on her small waist. He felt and heard her heart skip, and he brought his forehead to her navel. Something inside him clicked into place, all the chaos in the back of his mind finally falling away to make room for something new, something so clean and fresh and strong, he didn’t know what to call it. He wrestled harder with the burning at the back of his throat.

Gentle fingers began to comb through his hair, smoothing it down, sweeping it away from his forehead. The sweetness of it broke him, and the struggle was over, he had lost. A torrent poured out of him, a burst dam. No scream, no saber, only tears. 

Shoulders heaving, his hands tightened on her, the anchor, the rock that held him in place as a new, swift river threatened to drown him in blinding light. He didn’t dare look up. He knew the bright sun, the source of this immolating, cleansing light, would beam out of the face of the woman he held in his hands. 

She held him to her until the tears stopped, and the connection ended. In its place was left only an exhausted void, everything else eroded away. He waited for the swirling maelstrom of fear and anger to descend on him again, to fog his mind’s eye, but it never came. He was empty. 

Certainty crashed through him, and he knew what he had to do.


End file.
